He never yet was bankrupt; but there's a first time for everything.

He is hidden now in my hovel in the rue des Poules, where no one will ever find him.

He is desperate, and he hasn't a penny.

Now, among the five or six houses built by these contractors, which have to be sold, there's a jewel of a house, built of freestone, in the neighborhood of the Madeleine,--a frontage laced like a melon, with beautiful carvings,--but not being finished, it will have to be sold for what it will bring; certainly not more than a hundred thousand francs.

By spending twenty-five thousand francs upon it it could be let, undoubtedly, for ten thousand.